Teach Your Kid, Grandkid to Dial 911 on Your Cellphone When You’re Unable

If you have an older Pixel and version of Android, start by holding the Power button for five seconds.

A reason to keep an old phone: All mobile phones, even those without an active carrier, phone number or SIM card, can be used to dial 911 if a cell signal is nearby.

But — and this is the same weakness of the early days of cellphones — the person calling needs to know the address where help should be sent. The phone won’t be able to transmit location information to the dispatcher who answers, and if the caller hangs up, a dispatcher can’t call back to get more information because the phone has no number.

Related: How to Find Wireless Emergency Alerts on Your Smartphone

How to send an SOS on an Android phone

Emergency SOS is like a 911 call but can be more inclusive. You can set it to notify family and friends when your phone is used to call emergency services. It is available on devices running Android 12 or later.

Google Pixel. On this smartphone, the button you press is the power button, but you’ll want to make sure Emergency SOS is enabled first. Tap Settings ⚙️ | Safety & Emergency | Emergency SOS | Turn on Emergency SOS.

The digits 911 are selected by default, but you can tap to change that number if you’d rather call a family member or caregiver. Google provides additional options in Settings.

You might want to determine in advance whom to call. A 5-year-old probably won’t mess with the list.

Rather than have those five presses automatically summon help following a five-second countdown, you can choose a Touch & hold option where you or someone else can touch and hold a circle that appears on the screen to require confirmation before emergency actions kick in.

If the kid you’re watching doesn’t follow instructions or is more likely to press the power button five times without an emergency, you can turn off Emergency SOS altogether. Tap the Call emergency services toggle switch to shut it off, but remember to turn it back on later.

You also can have the phone automatically text your location to designated contacts, presumably grown-ups, if an emergency occurs. Inside Settings, Pixel owners can tap a button to try a simulated demo of what to expect after Emergency SOS starts, which you might want to show your grandson to train him.

Samsung Galaxy. Samsung Galaxy owners can visit Settings ⚙️ | Safety and Emergency | Emergency SOS to launch the feature on their handsets. On such devices, you press the side button five times.

You can change the emergency number from 911 to something else, like on a Pixel, and text your location to emergency contacts. Another option lets you require a swipe of the call button after pressing the side button five times before the emergency number is called.

How to send an SOS on an iPhone

As with Android, the five-press routine works on iPhones, too.

Go to Settings ⚙️ | Emergency SOS and make sure the Call with 5 Button Presses switch is enabled, meaning green rather than gray is showing. If so, those five rapid presses will initiate an alarm and a countdown, after which the local emergency services will be called.

You’ll have about 8 seconds to stop the call if you or a child does this accidentally or otherwise. To help the emergency dispatcher assist you, the call may include your location even if you haven’t enabled your location in Location settings, Apple says.

If you enable the Call with Hold and Release button in Settings, continuously holding the side button and either volume button sounds an alarm and starts a countdown. The iPhone will call emergency services after the countdown ends once you release the buttons, and then slide the SOS Emergency Call button that appears on the screen.

Tap the X in a circle ⨂ to cancel or slide the Medical ID button to surface your emergency contacts plus additional information about your height, weight, blood type and any medical conditions you have, which you would have previously set up in the Health app on the phone.

Within Emergency SOS in Settings ⚙️, you also can tap a Call Quietly switch to silence warning alarms, flashes and VoiceOver audio.

Bonus tip: Record the emergency on a Pixel

If you have a Google Pixel, you can record a continuous video of an emergency episode of up to 45 minutes. Tap Safety & emergency | Emergency SOS | Record emergency video. Such videos are automatically backed up to your Google Account and the Personal Safety app on the phone.

Your emergency contacts will automatically receive a link to the video. You’ll have 15 seconds after the recording stops to cancel sharing.

Only a single sharing link per video can be active at a given time, Google says. And each link has a seven-day expiration to protect your privacy.

Inside the Help settings on the Pixel, Google cautions folks to use video sharing carefully: “Recordings of emergency events may be disturbing to your emergency contacts and may cause those persons distress.”